Freedom Planet

Another summer, another Summer Games Done Quick. If you’re not familiar with what the it is: basically it’s an event where a lot of speedrunners do live runs of various games for charity. In this case for Doctors Without Borders. And this year they’ll be streaming some Sonic games on the first day already.

Mostly made by forum member Stephen “Strife” DiDuro, the 16-bit-ish platformer Freedom Planet has finally been released on Steam after a few delays. This game is inspired by Mega Drive games with lovable protagonists like Rocket Knight Adventures, Ristar, and, of course, Sonic the Hedgehog. You can play as three different characters, of which two are playable in the story more. The third character will also get a story mode later on as free DLC. One of those characters is a cat who drives up walls with a motorcycle, bet you can’t find a Youtube video of real-life cat doing that! (But if you can, please link it in the comments below)

Miami is known for quite a lot of things, but a burgeoning event for comic and game aficionados of South Florida, the Florida Supercon, bubbled to one of its biggest shows yet. Invading the Miami Beach Convention Center located a stones throw from South Beach during the Fourth of July weekend, the event featured several game development studios showing their works. Joining the likes of Yacht Club Games’ Shovel Knight and Dennaton Games’ Hotline Miami 2 was a small group under the banner of Galaxy Trail, makers of Freedom Planet.

For those unfamiliar with Freedom Planet, take a moment to consider the halcyon era of the MegaDrive. Taking cues from Sonic The Hedgehog, Sparkster (or Rocket Knight, if you prefer), Ristar, and Pulseman among others, Freedom Planet stars speedster Sash Lilac, the brawler and biker Carol Tea, and the timid but imaginative Milla Basset, on a journey to save the land of Avalice from certain peril. You know, the typical thing that will send heroes out to smack a few baddies in the face.

Given its origins as a Sonic fangame that grew to its own style and found great success not only on Kickstarter but on Steam’s Greenlight service, Galaxy Trail’s presence at Supercon definitely warranted checking in on the game, now that its Steam release of July 19 is just around the corner. There, I met with the lead programmer and creator of the game Stephen “Strife” DiDuro.

Here in America, it’s Martin Luther King Jr’s Day. It’s also Inauguration Day for President Obama. If you’re a Fox Newscaster, today is probably the worst day of your life. But for everyone else, t’s an action packed day to let you guys know the up and up on whats been going on in today’s Monday Links. Oh man, whats that?

HACKING CONTEST?

Retro News

The Sonic Hacking Contest for 2013 is underway! Deadline for submission is July 31st 2013. [Sonic Hacking Contest]

2013 has still only just started, meaning there’s still not a whole lot going on when it comes to news. Still, some of what’s going on is pretty cool, like Nvidia announced their very own gaming handheld. And it uses Nvidia Tegra technology! Meaning that Bartman3010 should be writing this Monday Links because praising Nvidia Tegra is his thing, but he’s busy so I’ll do it for him: Nvidia Tegra is amazing and cool and probably cooler than you are and can run Sonic 4 Episode 2. And that’s what Bartman3010 maybe would have written for today’s Monday Links.

Sonic Retro News

Remember Sonic XG? Apparently Joseph Waters (Nitemare) is still working on it and had put a new video of the game online last week. [Youtube]

Strife has uploaded an updated demo of his upcoming game Freedom Planet, he’s also looking into starting a Kickstarter page of the game soon. [Freedom Planet]

Anarchy Reigns releases tomorrow you guys, or on Friday if you live in Europe. [Anarchy Reigns]

Even though SEGA has put a lot more focus on releasing games digitally lately, they were still the sixth best retail games publisher in the UK. [MCVUK]

Here’s a new trailer for Aliens: Colonial Marines that we forgot to link last week. [Youtube]

Nvidia announced their own brand new Android gaming handheld using the latest of the amazing Nvidia Tegra technology. Meaning you can probably run Sonic 4 Episode 2 on it, so there’s your Sonic news for the week. [The Verge]